Liang Wenbo today produced one of the best breakbuilding performances ever seen in beating Martin Gould 5-1 at the Bahrain Open qualifiers.
Liang made a 147 as well as breaks of 115, 139 and 139.
Ronnie O'Sullivan made five centuries during his 5-2 victory over Ali Carter in the Northern Ireland Trophy last year.
Peter Ebdon, Tom Ford, Stephen Hendry and Shaun Murphy have previously made four centuries in a best of nine frame ranking event match.
However, the audience for Liang's extraordinary performance was miniscule. His table at Prestatyn only seats 20 people and it was not a full house.
How different it would have been had World Snooker heeded my advice and put a webcam on the qualifiers.
The standard of snooker and big names at Prestatyn this season make much of what happens there more interesting than some matches at the main venues.
And it doesn't cost very much to stream matches live.
The money would certainly be better spent than on the Hotshots PR initiative, of which virtually nothing has been heard since it was launched.
Judd Trump turned this down because he wanted to concentrate on his snooker and has gained more media coverage in the last fortnight than all the Hotshots put together.
Why? Because ultimately it is what happens on the table that matters.
And it is on the table that Liang has reminded us just what an awesome talent he is.
What a shame hardly anyone witnessed this slice of snooker excellence.
15 comments:
Couldn't agree more
You get fortunes spent on all these stupid phoney PR campaigns and all snooker fans want is to be able to watch the snooker
Steve Davis, Mark Williams and of course Wenbo are playing tomorrow and I can't log on at work and take a sneaky peak at a web stream
Who exactly is running this sport and why are they running it into the ground?
Williams v Trump tomorrow - I'd love to watch a stream of that!
But World Snooker don't care what snooker fans think
Those who are currently running the sport are just too slow to understand their time...
The livescores are annoying too, would be much better if you could follow more than one match at a time. Thank God for GSC.
thanks matt!!
well you can actually watch more than one match at a time. I made a little gizmo for my own use but I'll share it with you guys too.
http://globalsnookercentre.co.uk/multi_live_scorer.htm
I have to say that the issue of streaming from Pontin's has me continually enraged.
GCS Ltd through our Broadcast Director Simon Smith, researched and set up live streaming during Pontin's events.
Due to finance and equipment constraints we only broadcast one table live, while sometimes recording a second table.
In January 2007 we approached WSA with an offer to provide FREE OF CHARGE, streaming from the qualifiers. We were ot only turned down, we were told that we would have to pay them to provide the service to them. Now I'm not very good at finance, but even to my simple mind, that didn't make any sort of financial sense to our company.
We also spoke to the various broadcasters & broadcast providers to BBC etc and were told they would welcome "production quality" footage of the qualifiers.
Nearly two years later and nothing has happened.
I would quite happily wander over to the venue in the morning and set up streaming on one of the tables. I am sitting here in Pontin's right now looking at our equipment gathering dust.
Hi Janie,
That's really dissapointing to hear. I come from a betting background and I can't believe that some of the big bookmakers wouldn't stream these qualifiers on their websites. I wondered whether Perform Group (who provide sports streaming content for bookmakers) had been in contact with either you or the WSA? I'm guessing the WSA would have to sanction something like this? I know fellow punters would really appreciate a service like this. Lets hope the increase in streaming on betting sites brings about some change in coverage of these qualifiers.
That's excellent Janie, was annoying me earlier having to switch between matches all the time, thanks :D
As for the issue of streaming, it just seems bizarre to be honest. I don't see what WSA have to gain by not taking advantage of your offer, or why they have not taken steps to make the qualifiers available themselves.
Maybe one day...
Who exactly is running this sport and why are they running it into the ground?>>>>>
It isn't ethnically diverse enough (apart from East Asian) and is seen as a quintessentially British sport. Certain people do not want anything to be seen as English/ British to be a success.
MW
I agree with what Rich P said - if the Championship league webstream can be funded by bookmakers, then surely the cameras at Pontins could for the same purpose. SOme of the names that are drawn against each other in the final qual round are tremendous and I'ld love to see the games, even one table would be good
sounds to me like the usual arrogant approach often met that pride does not allow someone elses idea to be used even though it would benefit many.
John H
Rich - Perform did go to World Snooker with a proposal but did not find it a very productive experience and so went to Barry Hearn instead, hence the Championship League was born
Cheers Dave. I spoke to perform before and they were very keen on World Champs final qualifying round. Don't know if there are any more plans afoot for further discussions but it looks, once again, that World Snooker are shooting themselves in their foot.
Erm, just a comment about Liang! That is an absolutely awesome display. I can't ever remember one player making 3 130+ breaks in a match.
So predictable that he lost out in his last match to Michael Judge though, guess it must have been hard to get himself up for another match after that performance.
Is there a reason for not streaming or recording these matches? I mean, I'd pay for eurosport player or any other provider if they showed the qualifiers. Those are some classic matches that we are missing out on. Only the very few get the chance to to Prestatyn or any snooker venue in general and people would pay for internet coverage (or attract web sponors). I have the money - why won't anyone take it??
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